Your IT strategy: Looking at the bigger picture

Your IT strategy: Looking at the bigger picture

I once had a conversation with a business owner who asked me an important question: “How do I make sure I’m thinking about the big picture, when I’m always working on a lot of small things that seem to take up all my time?”

It is easy to get lost in the weeds at work. While being heads down has its place, it is equally critical to look up: to reflect on how things are going, to consider implementing strategies and to ask yourself the hard complex questions.

Why looking at the bigger picture is so important

A very clever piece of advertising by The Guardian, aimed at making the viewer look at the bigger picture from all points of view.

As a business owner how can you begin to understand the complexities of your IT infrastructure, the needs of your employees IT requirements and what IT is required in the next five years, whilst running your business? Many business owners fail to step back and look at the big picture, they are often too busy managing all other aspects of their business and therefore their IT falls by the waist-side.

Businesses today use IT systems in several different ways, all at once. IT systems are fundamental to the commercial success of every business. With the increase in security breaches and flexible working, creating an IT strategy can be time consuming and extremely complex. Many businesses now look to the experts to provide these strategic IT roadmaps, which allows business owners to focus on what they do best.

Today we are going to explain why businesses need an IT strategy to gain access to the bigger picture now and for the future.

Why businesses need an IT Strategy

We all know that the majority of IT systems are implemented on a reactive basis, as and when they are needed, which results in a mish-mash of IT systems within each department. This approach is very common, it usually occurs when the managers of each department are unaware of the overarching business strategy. In turn, it makes it extremely difficult for the IT department to support these individual systems. It can be expensive, unreliable and time consuming.

IT strategies are vital when outlining the short, medium and long-term IT requirements of your business. They can help reduce costs and improve efficiencies, amongst other benefits listed below:

Improve productivity

Streamline costs

Be prepared for future growth

Business flexibility

Security and protection

How we achieve this

The right approach to developing a new IT strategy involves a fairly structured, sequential process that produces a long-term view of the organisation’s technology requirements together with a plan for meeting these needs. Taylor Made’s IT strategies include the following:

Auditing and interviews that give us a valuable insight in to what your IT looks like today

We set out an agreed roadmap of informed recommendations to improve your IT

We provide information on IT budgets needed, pace of improvement and schedule for projects

We use our unique IT Maturity Model to demonstrate progress and value for money

Careers

If you believe you can help us to support our client base we would love to hear from you. If you do not see anything that you think would suit you, we are always looking for talented individuals and welcome speculative enquiries, so please contact us and send in your CV using the form on our careers page.

Taylor Made’s policy is that all applicants must have the right to work in the UK.